Chapter Text
After his visit a while back, Yi made good on his promise to stay in touch. He called at least once every other week, determined not to let too much time slip by again. Of course, there were moments when work consumed him or he simply forgot. Whenever that happened, she would gently remind him that he didn’t need to call so often. Not that she minded, quite the opposite. His calls were what she looked forward to most. It made her happy that he bothered to call at all and listen to her ramble on about what he would call ‘mundane nonsense’. She just didn’t want him burdening himself, as if staying connected were an obligation rather than something he wanted to do.
If he missed several days and phoned again with an apology, she would tell him not to worry. And, stubborn as ever, he would insist that she was the one who needn’t worry. So when his call came right on time yesterday evening, she wasn’t surprised. She answered on the very first ring, a smile already settling on her face. He never began with a simple hello, instead, he would say her name, nothing more waiting for her to do the same. There was nothing particularly different in the way he said it, no special inflection he reserved just for her, and yet hearing her name in his voice made her heart flutter every single time.
As they spoke, Heng could tell something weighed on him. He was quieter than usual, his responses delayed, his attention drifting in and out of the conversation. More than once she had to ask if he was listening, and more than once he asked her to repeat herself, her words were struggling to reach him through whatever occupied his mind.
When she gently suggested they end the call early so he could get some rest, he dismissed the idea almost immediately. “I’m not tired.” he had said, too quickly, then fell silent save for his grumbling.
Yi was not someone who fumbled. He chose his sentences carefully, delivered them with a natural poise she admired. Hearing him hesitate like this unsettled her. So she stayed quiet, giving him time to gather his thoughts, even as a quiet worry began to bloom in her chest. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if this was the kind of conversation that shouldn’t happen over a phone line at all. She was already preparing to tell him she would book a ticket to Kunlun, so that they could speak face to face, when he finally broke the silence.
His tone shifted back to his usual steadiness. He told her he couldn’t share the specifics; the matter involved classified work. But, after a brief pause, he admitted that he had taken in a young boy named Shuanshuan. He told her that he’d been taking care of him for a little over a year now.
Yi wasn’t antisocial, not really. Even before he left home, he had kept a small circle of friends he saw from time to time. But he had always been… an acquired taste. He didn’t mince his words, didn’t dress them up to make them easier to digest. Even with her, he was blunt, she had never minded; she had grown up with him. She understood that his sharp edges were simply part of who he was.
Still, Yi could be callous when he chose to be. He had never been one to hold his tongue, and though he would never admit it now, he was more like their mother than he cared to acknowledge, unyielding, demanding, and stubborn to the core.
And beyond temperament, there was practicality, Yi was always busy, burdened with work that carried weight and consequence. His duties as a Sol were not light. The thought of him taking on the responsibility of raising a child on top of everything else felt almost impossible.
After another long pause, he asked the favor at last.
‘Would you be willing to teach Shuanshuan how to swim?’
He explained that he’d promised the boy some time ago, and now Shuanshuan was determined to hold him to it unwaveringly. The image sprang to mind effortlessly; a small child following Yi around with a single mission that he was determined to see through. Repeating the question until even Yi’s formidable patience began to fray. A soft giggle slipped from her before she could stop it, quickly blooming into open laughter when she heard him release a long, resigned sigh on the other end.
Still, as humorous as this was she hadn’t yet understood her role in this.
And then it clicked.
Yi couldn’t swim.
He could keep himself from drowning, of course. He could tread water, endure it, survive it. But swimming had never been something he mastered. She remembered their childhood trips to the ocean vividly; how he would hover near the shore, insisting they stay where the waves were small and the sand still firm beneath their feet.
Then he said the one thing that made her pulse quicken.
If she agreed, they could come tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Today.
The word felt sudden and impossibly close, collapsing all the distance between them in an instant. She didn’t hesitate, any excuse to see him again, and so soon was good enough for her. Her answer came too fast, too bright. And when the call ended, she found herself wondering if her excitement had rung a little too clearly through the line.
This is how she found herself packed and ready hours before they were scheduled to arrive today. At least her getting ready a bit too early gave her some time to get her thoughts together. What kind of boy was Shuanshuan? Yi hadn’t given her much to go off of, still she was curious to know just what it was that made Yi decide to take in a child. Perhaps Shuanshuan reminded Yi of himself.
She closed her eyes, a ghost of a smile playing at the corner of her mouth as she pictured Yi standing beside a stone faced child, both of them nose deep in some dense academic text. The two of them quizzing each other on the finer points of telelurgy, voices low and poised, offering anyone brave enough to interrupt them identical, frosty glares.
The image was so absurdly vivid she almost laughed.
She could see it, two solemn figures seated at a table far too large for both of them, pages turning in perfect unison. Yi correcting a miscalculation without looking up. Shuanshuan frowning fiercely at a line of script, refusing assistance until he had wrestled it into submission himself.
Stubbornness recognizing stubbornness.
But the longer she let the picture linger, the less certain she felt.
Yi raising a little Yi wouldn’t bode well in reality far too much of the two clashing just like Yi did with their mother. The quiet intellectual atmosphere she created in her head had already collapsed on itself. As the illusion dissolved, a different question surfaced.
Why had he waited until now to tell her?
A year was no small span of time. Perhaps this arrangement had never been meant to last. Perhaps he had thought it temporary at first just another responsibility to shoulder briefly before things returned to normal. And only now, when leaving was no longer an option, had he allowed himself to speak of it aloud. It was plausible Yi didn’t waste time talking about things he deemed pointless.
Still, she wished he had kept her in the loop. The calls were nice, more than nice, they were precious to her, but they were curated in a way that left her hovering at the edges. They were a gateway into the innerworking of the life he had away from home, away from her. But she did not know the shape of his home. She did not know what his evenings looked like. She had not known there was a child’s voice woven into them.
She didn’t quite feel like she was a part of his life again. Not in the way she selfishly wanted to be.
It was an ugly thought, and she winced at herself for it. It was wrong to be envious of someone she hadn’t even met yet, it was even worse that it was only a child.
They were no longer children sharing a roof and routine, they had different lifestyles. Expecting to be consulted on every change was unreasonable.
And yet she still wanted to be.
Heng sighed, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palms as if she could press the selfishness out of herself. It was ridiculous, she was not competing with a child. And yet the thought had slipped in so naturally.
'If only it were her he was coming home to.’
That unsettled her more than she cared to admit. It revealed something raw and unguarded beneath all her careful reasoning.
That she loved him as something more than a brother.
Heng lowered her hands slowly, her heart unsteady beneath her ribs.
She loved him, not in the careless way she had loved him as a child, possessive and unquestioning, certain he would always be beside her. Not in the easy way she loved him as family, stitched together by a shared upbringing, this was something heavier.
It lived in the way her heart swelled when he said her name. In the way she counted the days between his calls but pretended not to. In how quickly she had agreed to today, desperate for any reason to see him again.
She swallowed, how vile of her to be envious of a child because he was able to be near Yi when she could not. Envious of the fact he could see him everyday while she was forced to wait painfully for the next call or rare visit.
Heng wanted to be the one who saw him when his careful composure slipped after a rough day, the one who knew how his shoulders sagged when he thought no one was looking. She wanted to be one whose presence filled the silence at the end of his day. She wanted all of him, every fragment of him again.
She pressed her palm lightly against her chest, as though she could steady the truth there.
It should have been obvious to her by now, she wasn’t the type to hide her feelings from herself. The signs were always there in the ways she clung to him even into adulthood.
Why his distance had always felt sharper than it should, the insistence of being near him whenever she could. Why the idea of him building a life that did not include her in its center made something inside her twist.
She longed for him and those feelings had nowhere to go.
She missed the sound of him moving through the house late at night. Missed the quiet companionship of him reading to her. Missed how he would watch her play the flute and not take his eyes off of her. Their lives had diverged, but the absence had never become comfortable. The ache of it lingered all the more with the truth laid bare.
She let out a slow breath, how many times she had hung up the phone with him, smiling softly, unaware that somewhere in the background. Had Shuanshuan ever overheard her voice through the receiver? Had he asked who she was?
Distance had a way of turning people into different versions of themselves. On the phone, Yi was composed, measured, and deliberate. Even his rare irritations were dulled by static. She had grown accustomed to that version of him.
But someone else had been living with the unfiltered one.
Someone else had seen him exhausted, had likely witnessed the sharpness of his temper and the quietness that followed. Watched him loosen his collar at the end of the day, learned the rhythm of his footsteps in a hallway she had never walked.
Perhaps that was why she had agreed so quickly. Why his request had felt like a lifeline rather than a convenience. Teaching Shuanshuan to swim was a simple favor on the surface, but beneath it was an invitation, however small, to step inside the life he had built without her.
Her gaze drifted to the horizon. She wouldn’t ask him to abandon everything for her, and she knew she would always hold a place in his heart. But perhaps today could be the beginning, an unspoken hint that she wanted more. The smile she had thought lost had returned, warming her from within. If she was to be part of his life again, it would start here, by embracing this new piece of him as well.
Shuanshuan was clearly important to Yi, which meant he would be important to her, too. If she wanted a place in his life, she would begin here; with the boy who refused to let Yi forget a promise, with water and sunlight, and a newfound resolve.
Heng exhaled slowly, letting the tension in her shoulders ease as she imagined the day ahead. The thought of water lapping at Shuanshuan’s small hands and Yi standing beside him with that familiar intensity, made her pulse quicken. It’d almost be as if Shuanshuan were their child, that thought alone was practically enough to blow away her previous concerns.
She straightened, feeling a warmth bloom in her chest that had nothing to do with the sun. She imagined kneeling at the edge of the water, showing Shuanshuan how to cup his hands to shoot water at an unsuspecting Yi, how to trust the buoyancy beneath him instead of fighting it. Yi would be there watching them, she could picture it so clearly, arms crossed, expression composed, only knee deep in the water while he offered practical commentary that no one had asked for pretending not to worry.
And she would see it, his minute shifts in his expression, tracking every movement the boy made. Trusting her to take care of his ward.
The sound of approaching footsteps drew her out of the thought. She looked up, and her smile deepened at the sight of Yi walking toward her, a small boy with shaggy hair falling into his eyes a few eager steps ahead of him, as though he could hardly contain himself.
They stopped just in front of her.
“Heng.” Yi nodded his head in greeting, composed as ever. “I hope you didn’t feel obligated to help me.”
She smiled easily at the both of them, letting her gaze linger without staring. Up close, Shuanshuan was taller than she had expected, taller than Yi if you looked closely. With their similar builds and matching white hair, it would have been easy to mistake them for brothers rather than guardian and ward.
“Of course not.” she replied lightly. “Mother and Father have gone on a trip of their own, so I’ve been left to my own devices for a few days.”
Her attention shifted fully to the boy. “You must be Shuanshuan. It’s nice to finally meet you.”
Shuanshuan’s face lit up, instantly nodding with unabashed enthusiasm.
“Yeah! And you’re Heng, right?” he said, grinning wide. “Yi talks about you all the time!”
For a split second, her composure faltered.
She watched Yi stiffen beside him. “That is an exaggeration.” he said flatly.
Shuanshuan shook his head, still grinning. “It’s not.”
Heng had to bite back a laugh, warmth flooding her chest despite herself. She met Yi’s eyes briefly, unable to hide the softness in her own.
“All good things, I hope?” she asked gently.
Yi answered before Shuanshuan could.
“Mostly.”
Her brows lifted. “Mostly?”
“Well.” she returned lightly, clasping her hands behind her back, “I hope you won’t mind if I share a few things about you that you’ve so carefully neglected to mention.”
Yi rolled his eyes but didn’t try to stop her. “I was aware of the risks when I asked for your help.” he said with a quiet huff. “He’s been asking to meet you ever since he overheard the end of one of our calls. The promise of you teaching him how to swim seemed like a convenient excuse.”
Shuanshuan nodded vigorously. “You sounded nice.”
Heng’s heart skipped.
The knowledge that Yi had spoken of her enough for Shuanshuan to form his own bright expectations sent a warmth spreading through her chest. And seeing how eagerly the boy had wanted to meet her eased the sharp edge of envy she’d wrestled with earlier. The feeling dissolved almost as soon as she acknowledged it.
Shuanshuan was impossibly sweet, doting on him would be no hardship at all.
“Well then.” she said, drawing in a steadying breath and offering him her hand. “I suppose we shouldn’t keep the water waiting.”
Shuanshuan didn’t hesitate. He slipped his smaller hand into hers without reservation, his grip firm and trusting. Yi’s gaze followed the motion wordlessly, face unreadable as usual. He said nothing, but the faint lift of his brow betrayed a trace of interest, with her free hand she took one of his intertwining their fingers.
“Did you want to hold hands too?” she teased lightly, her voice carrying a warmth that made Shuanshuan grin and Yi’s jaw twitch just slightly, the smallest break in his composure.
Shuanshuan squeezed her hand eagerly, eyes sparkling. Heng laughed softly, heart swelling, they really felt like family here.
“There you go with your nonsense again…” Yi said, letting out a resigned sigh, though he squeezed her hand in return. With his free hand, he bent to pick up the bag she had packed. “Let’s get going before Shuanshuan loses his patience.”
Heng smiled, the warmth of both their presence wrapping around her like sunlight. She fell into step between them as they began the short walk to the ocean, the familiar path from so many childhood family outings bringing a sense of ease and belonging. With every step, she felt it more clearly; this moment, this togetherness was exactly where she was meant to be.